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Pakistanis protest Taliban attack on 14-year-old girl

By Declan Walsh New York Times News Service

Posted:
10/10/2012 11:10:41 PM MDT

Updated:
10/10/2012 11:12:07 PM MDT

Click photo to enlarge

Pakistani members of Minhaj-ul-Quran Women League, hold up pictures of 14-year-old schoolgirl Malala Yousufzai, who was shot on Tuesday by the Taliban for speaking out in support of education for women, during a protest to condemn the attack, in Lahore, Pakistan, Wednesday, Oct. 10, 2012. Pakistani doctors successfully removed a bullet Wednesday from the neck of a 14-year-old girl who was shot by the Taliban for speaking out in support of education for women, a government minister said. Banner top center reads, " Minhaj-ul-Quran Women League, Lahore."

KARACHI, Pakistan -- Doctors on Wednesday removed a bullet from a Pakistani schoolgirl shot by the Taliban, as Pakistanis from across the political and religious spectrum united in revulsion at the attack on the 14-year-old education rights campaigner.

A Taliban gunman singled out and shot the girl, Malala Yousafzai, on Tuesday, and a spokesman said it was in retaliation for her work in promoting girls' education and children's rights in the northwestern Swat Valley, near the Afghan border.

Yousafzai was removed from immediate danger after the operation in a military hospital in Peshawar early Wednesday, during which surgeons removed a bullet that had passed through her head and lodged in her shoulder, one hospital official said.

The government kept a Boeing jet from the national carrier, Pakistan International Airlines, on standby at the Peshawar airport to fly Yousafzai to Dubai, United Arab Emirates, for emergency treatment if necessary, although senior officials said she was too weak to fly.

"She is improving. But she is still unconscious," said Mian Iftikhar Hussain, the provincial information minister, whose only son was shot dead by the Taliban in 2010. He said Yousafzai remained on a ventilator.

Hussain announced a government reward of more than $100,000 for information leading to the arrest of her attackers.

"Whoever has done it is not a human and does not have a human soul," he said.

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Across the rest of the country, Pakistanis reacted with outrage to the attack on the girl, whose eloquent and determined advocacy of girls' education had made her powerful symbol of resistance to Taliban ideology.

"Malala is our pride. She became an icon for the country," Interior Minister Rehman Malik said.

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